Recently in Resources Category

I'm listening to Justin Elliott talk about the changes to the University's streaming server environment and am really excited about a few changes. Clearly what we all measure the video upload/sharing experience with YouTube ... we don't and really can't replicate that functionality, but we can get closer. One big thing his team has added are public videos with embed codes. That is important as it makes it YouTube easy to add video to your blog. Below is an example of an old QTS version of a talk Kyle Peck gave several years ago, but embedded here.

There are so many other things that are being done, including integrating Kaltura into the Blogs, but I thought I would at least share the embed code. Why do we even worry about this? We traditionally ran the QTSS to allow faculty to restrict access to content that may be covered under copyright. The moves going forward will change the way we allow everyone at PSU to work video into their digital lives online.

Something I failed to mention in my reflection post was the release of the 2009 NMC Horizon Report. Each year NMC and ELI team up to publish an annual look into the crystal ball of emerging teaching and learning trends ... I always look forward to the release of this publication and it typically has several items in it that we are looking at or that are on our radar ... it also does a great job of giving us new directions for where we are headed in the future.

The big difference this year is that I was invited to be a member of the advisory board and let me say it was an honor working with so many smart and talented people in our field. You can read the finished report on your own, so I won't get too far into it ... but the section on the Personal Web was a place I lobbied hard to make sure it appeared.

What I found fascinating was the process the NMC took to gather the items for the report. We were given wiki space, a collection of tags, and some heavy duty deadlines to make sure we contributed. Each step of the process was well regulated and kept us all pushing each other to not only dream, but to provide evidence that our dreams could come true. If you are interested in a well formed collaborative process for publication take a look at the Horizon wiki.

While at ELI, they formally released the report to the community in a session. It should be required reading for all of us! Grab a copy and take a look.

I just wrote a short piece about how to get the video files you want on the iPhone over at my other blog. If it is of interest, take a look.

This does nothing for me as I am a proud user of PSU IMAP mail, but I have heard people trying to make it happen. I didn't test it, just passing it along. If you need to sync with Exchange 2003, here is an option.

Through the magic of del.icio.us I was handed a link by my friend D'Arcy Norman to allow WordPress blogs to auto detect the iPhone and simplify the intrface for use on Safari. I know it doesn't help us here in the Blogs at PSU, but if you are running WordPress the iWPhone plugin may be worth a try. My personal site, Learning & Innovation, is a WordPress powered blog and I have the plugin working over there. Take a peek with your iPhone and see the difference.

In general browsing the web on the iPhone is a good experience, but I am noticing how much better it is as more and more people start deploying iPhone friendly versions of their sites.

Apple has created a website that gives us the info we need to create the right kinds of web apps, but that is as far as they'll go with it. What kinds of apps should we be thinking about? One I could use would be a better view of my calendar.

I have a more extensive post about this over at my other blog.

In ETS we use 37 Signals' project management/tracking application, BaseCamp. It isn't perfect, but what app really is? What it gives us in an online hub for project tracking and communication. The other thing it gives us a great UI for working with.

37 Signals also has a free list manager called, Ta-Da List that helps people get things done -- since GTD is all the rage these days, having access to a very well designed list manager from the iPhone is good thing. I am going to experiment with how well it can handle my daily calendar -- again another step to manage, but until I can figure out (or more appropriately, someone who is smarter than I am) how to make our Oracle Calendar work more fluidly with iCal/iPhone I will continue to explore other options. 37 Signals has redesigned Ta-Da List so it is optimized for an iPhone browsing experience ... I think we are going to see more of this. Accounts are free, so if you have an iPhone give it a try.

I know it is backwards, but that's how PhotoBooth shoots it.

At Apple's WWDC, Steve Jobs the crowd of developers that to build apps for the iPhone they could use standard web 2.0 technologies -- I understood a lot of people were disappointed, but as a former Treo user, I like the fact that I can't download a bunch of unstable applications to my perfectly running device. I am however very interested in seeing what apps are written that take advantage of the Safari browser on the iPhone.

This morning I read of a new site Apple is offering to browse their extensive movie trailer site. I know it isn't really an app, but it is one of the first iPhone specifc site I have seen thus far. If you go there with your iPhone you get access to the same content on Apple's standard trailer site ... if you go there with a browser, you get bumped to the traditional URL.

Apple's iPhone Movie Trailer Site: http://apple.com/trailers/iphone

I am using the tag "psuiphone" at del.icio.us to tag resources. You can see all resources tagged psuiphone here:

http://del.icio.us/tag/psuiphone